Stephen Carlson wrote:...is there a monolingual Koine dictionary? Does one exist?

Daniel Streett wrote:As for monolingual dictionaries, nothing satisfactory exists right now as far as I'm aware, which perhaps shows how far we have to go.

MAubrey wrote:I know that a number of people have talked about it. I hope that it will happen at some point.

Louis Sorenson wrote:So far, all comments on a Koine-Koine lexicon are in the abstract.

Randall Buth wrote:A Greek mono doesn't exist. What is truly a desideratum is a Greek-Greek tome....Greek-Greek dictionaries would both help and speed up your learning of synonyms and their relationships. bi-lingual is OK for a start, but you/we need Greek-Greek for arriving.

Stephen Hughes wrote:You do something similar with semantic lexical meaning everytime you pick up a Greek to English dictionary. Rather than the word having a context in Greek with synonyms, antonyms and usual collocations, it is given outside its own Greek context with a (pseudo-)equivalence with English, or an English meaning / context explanation. There is some benefit in building up knowledge from those crutches and scaffolds, but it is not altogether a natural approach to mastery of a language as a language in itself.

Well, I ordered it from the Anglo-American website Paul suggested. I'll give a review when I see it. But as a curriculum developer, I really wish I had a digital version of this book. I assume this book is in the very early stages of a full Greek-Greek lexicon. Some entries may be full; some scant. Perhaps we need a few entries (perhaps 10) by which to evaluate these types of lexicons.

For me, whether staying in the target language is valuable, is a settled question. Staying in the target language yields better quality, more enjoyable learning. Whether using a monolingual dictionary is a very useful tool to help a learner stay in the target language is an open question. I'd like to try to answer that for myself and will evaluate Caruso's book on that basis. I anticipate that the book could have two other uses. A teacher looking to find ways of expressing definition in Greek could learn from it. A learner who wanted to develop his thinking in Greek could use it to stretch himself.

Here's a germane quotation from VIA NOVA.

Jones wrote:

A method is therefore direct in so far as it secures that the pupil thinks in the language which he is studying… The natural tendency to think in English is so strong that it is only kept in check by a strong set of mind in the contrary direction… Every percentage of English spoken in the lesson will therefore produce a larger percentage of English thought.(p. 13-14).

Jones, W.H.S. (1915) Via Nova or The Application of the Direct Method to Latin and Greek. Cambridge: University Press

Louis L Sorenson wrote:Perhaps we need a few entries (perhaps 10) by which to evaluate these types of lexicons.

Emiliano Caruso wrote that the price of this book is high because, "I chose the highest quality paper and binding I could find." I had suggested that he put more sample pages up on his website. He sent me sample pages by email, saying that I could share them with those who are especially interested. For those who would like to see them, send me a private message with your email address and I'll forward them to you.

I think it is usual to go from a single known word to a number of others. In the case that I am using as an example, one could learn κλίνη, then use κλίνη to make an L2-L2 definition for κλινίδιον, κράββατον and κραββάτιον.

At the risk of judging the work for what it is not, rather than what it set out to be, from what little I've seen of it, it doesn't do all those things.

It is definitely a work of great merit and something to continue pondering and chasing through. As Markos says, it is a work to be used in conjunction with a standard set of books. It does not contain enough information or utility to be able to be used as a stand-alone reference work.

Paul-Nitz wrote:For me, whether staying in the target language is valuable, is a settled question. Staying in the target language yields better quality, more enjoyable learning. Whether using a monolingual dictionary is a very useful tool to help a learner stay in the target language is an open question.

I'm finding it hard to stay in the target language while using it. It may be because of years of memorising glosses, but having single Greek words to explain the lemmata, means that I have to understand the words in the entries. Fortunately, I know (or can sensibly guess at) the majority of them, but unfortunately my knowledge of them is through glosses. I suspect that a user who doesn't know the meaning of the words in the dictionary entries would have a slightly different experience in using this dictionary.

Seeing abbreviations for the works from which quotes were taken written in Italian was a little confusing till I realised that they were in Italian.

Stephen Hughes wrote:How is polysemy handed?

It seems to be ignored for the most part. The bibliography is telling. There are none of the Greek to Greek dictionaries from the diglossic era that I expected to see ( Δημητράκου. Μέγα Λεξικόν Όλης της Ελληνικής Γλώσσης, 15 τόμοι. - still under copyright, Λεξικόν της ελ in itληνικής γλώσσης / συνταχθέν υπό Σκαρλάτου Δ. του Βυζαντίου - published in the nineteenth century). Those major works in Greek among others do make a good distinction between the different meaning of the lemmata. Caruso seems to pick one meaning, and follows the lines of synonyms, antonyms and the occasional explanation from that meaning - presumably that was the meaning that was considered the most useful.

Louis L Sorenson wrote:Well, I ordered it from the Anglo-American website Paul suggested.

Mine arrived from AAB in good repair within the advertised delivery times.